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Quentin Tarantino suing Gawker over leaked script

By Tony Hicks, Contra Costa Times

Updated:
01/28/2014 08:59:47 AM MST

In this Oct. 18, 2013 file photo, director Quentin Tarantino delivers a speech before receiving the Lumiere Award during the 5th edition of the Lumiere Festival, in Lyon, central France. Tarantino sued Gawker Media LLC on Monday, Jan. 27, 2014, in Los Angeles for copyright infringement over the site's posting of a story that linked to a leaked copy of his script for a planned film called "The Hateful Eight." (Laurent Cipriani/AP)

TMZ reported Monday the suit — filed in Los Angeles — says “Gawker Media has made a business of predatory journalism, violating people's rights to make a buck. ... This time they went too far.”

Tarantino reportedly discovered last week the script was leaked after his agent starting getting calls from actors wanting to be in the Western. The director called Mike Fleming Jr. at Deadline and vented.

“I'm very, very depressed,” Tarantino reportedly said. “I finished a script, a first draft, and I didn't mean to shoot it until next winter, a year from now. I gave it to six people, and apparently it's gotten out today.”

Just so he knows ... it was wasn't me.

“I gave it to one of the producers on 'Django Unchained,' Reggie Hudlin, and he let an agent come to his house and read it,” Tarantino said. “That's a betrayal, but not crippling because the agent didn't end up with the script.”

OK, so who else?

“I gave it to three actors: Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, Tim Roth,” Tarantino said. “The one I know didn't do this is Tim Roth. One of the others let their agent read it, and that agent has now passed it on to everyone in Hollywood. I don't know how these (expletive) agents work, but I'm not making this next. I'm going to publish it, and that's it for now. I give it out to six people, and if I can't trust them to that degree, then I have no desire to make it. I'll publish it. I'm done. I'll move on to the next thing. I've got 10 more where that came from.”

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Tarantino told Deadline he thinks Dern's CAA agent is behind the leak. Deadline spoke to sources at CAA who deny the leak came from their office. The CAA source told Fleming that Tarantino himself is probably behind the leak.

Maybe he'll end up suing himself.

Gawker published excerpts on its website, but apparently also published a link to the whole screenplay.